Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov (russian: Влади́мир Никола́евич Топоро́в; 5 July 1928 in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

5 December 2005 in Moscow) was a leading

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

associated with the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school. His wife was

Tatyana Elizarenkova Tatyana Yakovlevna Elizarenkova (September 17, 1929, Saint Petersburg - September 5, 2007, Moscow) was a distinguished Soviet Russian Indologist and linguist, known for her study of the Vedas. She was described by Wendy Doniger as "the greatest li ...

. Toporov authored more than 1500 works, including ''Akhmatova and Dante'' (1972), ''Towards the Reconstruction of the Indo-European Rite'' (1982), ''Aeneas: a Man of Destiny'' (1993), ''Myth. Rite. Symbol. Image'' (1995), ''Holiness and Saints in the Russian Spiritual Culture'' (1998), and ''Petersburg Text of Russian Literature'' (2003). He translated the

Dhammapada The Dhammapada (Pāli; sa, धर्मपद, Dharmapada) is a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form and one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures. The original version of the Dhammapada is in the Khuddaka ...

into Russian and supervised the ongoing edition of the most complete vocabulary of the Prussian language to date (5 volumes). Among Toporov's many honours were the

USSR State Prize The USSR State Prize (russian: links=no, Государственная премия СССР, Gosudarstvennaya premiya SSSR) was the Soviet Union's state honor. It was established on 9 September 1966. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, t ...

(1990), which he turned down to voice his protest against the repressive

January Events , partof = Revolutions of 1989, Singing Revolution, and Dissolution of the Soviet Union , image = , caption = A man with a Lithuanian flag in front of a Soviet tank, 13 January 1991 , date = ...

of the Soviet administration in

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

; the first ever Solzhenitsyn Prize (1998), and the Andrei Bely Prize for 2004. He was a member of the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...

and many other scholarly societies.

External links

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Obituary by the Russian Ministry of Culture
{{DEFAULTSORT:Toporov, Vladimir Balticists Toporov Toporov Toporov Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Toporov Toporov Toporov Moscow State University alumni Russian scholars of Buddhism Researchers of Slavic religion Solzhenitsyn Prize winners Paleolinguists 20th-century philologists